Sports pictures and impact

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32860, 8 March 1972, Page 15

Sports pictures and impact

Py

M.P.C.

"DOES anyone look at sports photographs?” my wife asked doubtfully, when I sought her advice on a picture to lead this page with.

It’s a good question, and there is probably much less general interest in them than photographers realise. For a sports picture to have a good chance of publication it must either illustrate a report or must have an arresting quality, often referred to as “impact.” Most newspaper photographs, unfortunately fall only into the former category. Some appear simply because they were the best of a poor lot and the sub-editor had to have something to relieve the monotony of type. It follows that professional photographers go to a great deal of trouble trying to obtain sports pictures that will catch the jaded eyes of illustrations editors. Their measures tend to concentrate on technique, and it is now almost hackneyed for a camera to be placed in a position where a photographer cannot remain, and operated by remote control.

Other techniques include producing the deliberate distortion of perspective through the use—and, at times, mis-use—of lenses of unusually short or long focal length, and this aspect will be covered in some detail next month. Another practice is to show action not by stopping it dead—and "dead” is often exactly the right word—but by blurring the background and/or parts of the main subject. The approach when you think it over, makes a lot of sense, and I regret having made little use of it myself. My advice to aspiring sports photographers on this point would be: "Go, thou, and do a sight better!” In earlier days, of course, illustrations editors and their superiors in the publishing hierarchy would not look at pictures containing blur, and there is still some prejudice against them in backward parts of the world.

We will go into this matter of controlled blur in a later issue, and it would be helpful if any readers with particularly good examples would send them in for consideration. Technical details would be useful and all prints will be returned provided they are accompanied by stamped, addressed envelopes. No slides, please. Prints should be addressed to: Practical Photography Page, “The Press,” P.O. Box 1005, Christchurch.

Credits and modest payments will be given for any published photograph.